Why Citizens Do and Do Not Attend Public Meetings about Local Cancer Cluster Investigations

Why do citizens choose to attend or not to attend community public meetings about possible cancer clusters? To answer this question, we examine self‐report data collected during a series of mail surveys conducted in six communities experiencing current health investigations into suspect levels of cancer or cancer clusters. We analyze the data using quantitative content analysis while also providing qualitative summaries and categorizations of survey participants' reasons for attending or not attending a specific public meeting in their community. In addition, we use survey data related to respondents' past participation and sociodemographic characteristics. The results found that rational reasons (e.g., to get information) dominated citizens' justifications for attending the public meetings, whereas socioeconomic and mobilization factors (e.g., did not hear about meeting, too busy) were most commonly cited as reasons for not attending. Less common but still present were relational considerations, such as believing the people in charge were fair. Taken together, the findings suggest that the majority of citizens who attended the public meetings could be categorized as the curious, the fearful, and the available. In comparison, the majority of citizens who did not attend could be described as the uninformed, the indifferent, the occupied, and the disaffected.